I’ve been able to twice sneak up on a chipmunk in my backyard while he was on the birdfeeder and pet his butt. Watching him turn around, look at me, freeze for one second, then FLY off the birdfeeder isn’t why I do it. I have a thing for chipmunks. I think they are adorable. And it bothers me why so many homeowners with gardens don’t like chipmunks. Many go beyond not liking them; I’ve known some people are convinced the chipmunks in their yard are conspiring against all of their bulbs, lettuce, flowers and shrubs in a strategic effort to completely denude their landscape. These people are convinced that chipmunks lie in wait, watching for daffodil planting time. Once the bulbs are planted, these same folks know — they just KNOW — that these 5 ounce beasts then pounce on the freshly turned soil to devour every last bulb within microseconds. So these people seek to destroy this enemy of their estate by any means possible.

This is all wasted energy and time, in my humble opinion, as well as the authors of Living With Wildlife: How to Enjoy, Cope with, and Protect North America’s Wild Creatures Around Your Home and Theirs. I have personally owned this book for over 15 years, find it incredibly useful, and was very pleased to see we have it in our very own library.
 

Here are a few reasons why we can all just chill out about chipmunks in our yards: 

1. The natural diet of chipmunks consists of acorns, nuts, berries, and seeds. They readily climb up on birdfeeders

2. Most chipmunks find the taste of daffodil bulbs yucky and don’t eat them.

3. I guess chipmunks may go after crocus or hyacinth, but I’ve got lots of them in my yard and lots of chipmunks and have had zero problems.

4. Chipmunks prefer to live in brush or wood piles, or will burrow underground. The burrows typically do not harm landscape or structures. If you have extensive burrows in your yard you probably have moles which are not NEARLY as cute.

5. Chipmunks are not as prolific as a lot of people think. Chips have 2 litters of 4-5 babies per year. Compare that to mice (8 litters of 4-7 babies/year) or voles (10 litters of 4-5/year), and it’s not so bad.

And really, let’s keep this all in perspective. This book was put out by the California Center for Wildlife, so there are sections on living peacefully with bears, mountain lions and moose. At least we aren’t fighting those out of our Cleveland yards, right?
 

Tale One: Big Tree, Big Axe.  Cleveland Botanical Garden has a row of maturing, healthy Norway maples (Acer platanoides) growing along East Boulevard.  And we are cutting them down.

Actually native to Norway and across northern Europe, the Norway maple has a detailed association with humans.  If never a lumber tree, it has long been valued for fine carpentry and horticulture.  In early 1700s Italy, Antonio Stradivari probably made the back boards for his supreme violins from Norway maple.  By the mid 1700s Norways had crossed the Atlantic to appear in Colonial seed lists; there is a 1756 record of one being planted in Philadelphia.  Norways were popular in 1800s New England as garden fancies (curiously, all our trees came from English nurseries, where Norway maple is non-native, so we have no wild provenance on  U.S. stocks).

But it took Dutch elm disease of the 1930s to bring the Norway maple to its current prominence in the northeastern U.S.  This disease that devastated our native American Elm (Ulmus americana) created a huge void in our street tree population, a void that was filled by existing nursery stock in the form of the Norway.  And it was a good elm substitute, for it was found to be easy to commercially re-propagate in a hurry, to transplant well, to grow vigorously on site, and to have tremendous tolerance of urban environments.

But the Norway also makes impenetrable canopy shade, throws copious fertile seed, and chemically inhibits competing seedlings. This suite of traits both “good” and “bad” soon helped the Norway become—you guessed it—a woody weed.

So here at the Garden, we had three Norway maples removed (I can’t say “felled” since they were hoisted up from their stumps and craned out of the garden) the week before last.  In the coming years, more will be removed.  And we already have a plan for the sunny slope they are leaving behind.  Our Woodland gardener has selected a swath of flowering shrubs, small trees, ferns and wildflowers to grow and thrive in this space.  The emphasis is on native plants, but there are exceptions; the design is naturalistic, but with an artistic gleam.  So watch this space with some anticipation.  Coming soon are flame azaleas and rosebay rhododendrons, native silverbell and spirea, hay-scented fern and fragrant sumac; a hillside painting in the sunshine.

Look around you.  If you have an ornamental maple in your yard with burgundy, bronze or chartreuse foliage, it is a Norway hybrid.  I don’t loathe the Norway so much as respect its potential.  Like all weeds, to me it is half-terror, half-teacher.

Tale Two: Big Tree, Small Axe.   Cleveland Botanical Garden has a nice Chestnut Oak (Quercus prinus) at the edge of the Restorative Garden, and right now it is dropping twigs damaged by a girdling beetle.

The flat-headed longhorn oak girdling beetle (poss. Oncideres quercus) probably won’t kill the tree.  But over the past few years of infestation it has already disfigured its twigs, by inducing hundreds of haphazard, zigzag re-growths.  And I have been taught by experience that one tree stress often invites others, which add up to sometimes deadly arithmetic.

This beautiful little creature wears wing covers that look as if they are made from hammered lead, and sprouts segmented, elegantly curved antennae that extend from flat head halfway to pointy tail.  It leads a peculiar and particular life.  The little twig tips littering the ground today were fashioned last autumn into nursery chambers by the adult beetles.  The adults chewed “girdling” rings into their twigs, and then laid a few to a few dozen eggs under the bark of each of their outrigger twigs.   The adults soon died, but their eggs hatched within the twigs, and spent the winter as larvae, nestled and safe up in the tree.  With this spring’s winds and rain, the girdled—and killed—twigs are now snapping free from their moorings, and falling to the garden floor.  And it is down here that the oak girdling beetle larvae begin to feed for a few weeks, eating their nursery walls.  They then pupate, again in their original twig chambers.  By mid-summer, the flying adults will hatch, eat some green wood, mate, and girdle more living chestnut oak twigs to complete their annual life cycle.  I will collect some twig tips, keep them contained, and see if I can capture one of the hatching adults this summer.  If successful, I will post pictures here.

Common in Ohio, I see evidence of the oak girdling beetle every year in chestnut oaks, white oaks (Quercus alba), and bur oaks (Quercus macrocarpa), too.  Bur oak twigs snap off a few months from now; is the wood perhaps more durable, or does bur oak bear a different species of beetle?

If you have girding beetles living in your oak, don’t fret.  Tend to the tree’s general health and it will withstand the infestation.  Don’t compact your oak tree’s soil or cut its roots, and don’t mulch it too heavily.  Prune damaged wood that might invite secondary disease.  And collect and destroy all the fallen twigs, so removing the next generation of beetles in the process.

Oaks have co-evolved along with a host of voracious native insects.  For their half of this never-ending pull-and-tug, oaks manufacture an array of tannins and possibly lignins for chemical defense. Nevertheless, an oak un-blighted by apple gall wasps, oak leaf rollers, or girdling beetles seems unusual to me.  They must be generous trees, and surely the flat-headed longhorn oak girdling beetle is fortunate for this bounty.

There you go: Two Cutting Tree Tales; Or, What I Saw In The Garden.

Posted by Mark Bir 
 

We have a new visitor to the Garden.  But this one has six legs, mandibles and compound eyes, and is most unwelcome.

The viburnum leaf beetle (Phyrrhalta viburnii) is here, and we are in danger of losing much of our flowering viburnum collection to its hunger.  Why is it such a problem?  Because the “VLB” has been introduced inadvertently to North America without any of its natural checks and balances, and so is free to chew its way through our wild and garden viburnums.  Not only that, it comes with a one-two punch, since both the larvae and adults feed on viburnum leaves.

A European native, this inconspicuous brown beetle—1/5” long—was first noticed in Canada about 1947 (possibly it was a hitchhiker on garden viburnums shipped from overseas].  VLB has since been making its way through the east; in 2000, it was verified in western PA and parts of Ashtabula County; by 2008 it was verified in Lake and Cuyahoga Counties.  We found it on some of the Garden viburnums this summer.

What is a gardener to do?  We could slather our viburnums with potent organophosphate insecticides, which would certainly kill VLB, along with all the other local arthropods, good and bad in the same basket.  We could do nothing, be totally organic, let the beetles have their way, and supplant infested viburnums with different flowering shrubs.

Or we could choose a hybrid approach.  If we made the effort to study VLB/viburnum interactions, we might then be able to design a modified organic control plan that selects mechanical and biological controls, but also permits least-toxic chemicals when absolutely needed.

Sounds like a pretty good idea!  Let’s walk through the hybrid “education and action” plan that we made for our VLB infestation.

As these things often go, VLB has learned to favor our smooth-leaved viburnums, especially arrow-wood (Viburnum dentatum), over the hirsute varieties it had back home.  Maybe it’s like eating nectarines instead of peaches? A Garden walk-about confirms this, so we decide to focus on arrow-wood, and simply monitor other viburnum varieties for VLB. This saves us effort and possible pesticide use; if other viburnums begin to show VLB damage, we’ll adjust protocol.

We also decide to provide complete cultural care to all our viburnums, to reduce their overall stress and so help them survive VLB.  This is a simple matter of composting and mulching in spring, and irrigating during possible summer dry spells.

Next, we consider the VLB life cycle, since it will help us discover when the beetle is most vulnerable.  VLB lays eggs by drilling into viburnum first- or second-year branch tips in early autumn; the eggs over-winter under the bark and hatch by early May; the larvae eat leaves, and then crawl down to the soil to pupate by early June; the adult beetles emerge by early July, eat leaves, mate, and complete the annual cycle. VLB presence is  betrayed by two identifying clues: "sewing machine" egg scars on dormant twigs (see photograph); buckshot feeding holes in the leaves starting in late spring.

Well, what is the best stage to arrest VLB?  We decide to go after the eggs, since they’re easy to catch!  A mechanical control method will work.  So, right now in early April, we are tip-pruning egg-laden young twigs from infected arrow-wood plants, and away from their future feeding bushes.  This is a good choice, since viburnums respond well to pruning, and will not suffer a loss of vigor.

In our highest visibility gardens, where viburnums need to be cosmetically perfect, we will forgo tip-pruning, and choose from two chemical control options.  First choice is an April spray of summer horticultural oil, which is essentially liquid candle wax.  Hort oil is topical, smothers the eggs, and does minimal harm to beneficial arthropods. Second choice is granular imidacloprid, a synthetic nicotine that is applied to soil and translocated from the roots to the young leaves, where it kills the feeding VLB.  Used like this, it also doesn’t harm predatory beneficial insects.

We will attempt to get by with just the early spray of benign hort oil.  If this is unsuccessful, next spring we’ll go for the nicotine.

Oil can also kill the larvae, but timing is more finicky.  Killing the adults requires stronger broadcast chemicals, and by their advent it is too late anyway to prevent leaf damage by the hungry spring larvae.

There it is.  We studied the plant and the insect, and used what we learned to pick a suite of smart, safe control methods for our VLB infestation.

There’s a name for this approach to pest control.  It is “Integrated Pest Management,”  or (here comes another acronym) IPM.  Local biological systems are kept intact, to buffer against future pest explosions.  Plants are grown with the grace of their unique nature in mind.  IPM views the garden as a whole, and not merely as a game board of plants vs. enemy insects and diseases.

The threat to Ohio’s wild and garden viburnums is real, and may even prove devastating.  Please monitor your viburnums for VLB damage, and be ready with IPM thinking.  Integrated Pest Management: control the pest without crushing the garden.

—I better get busy, I think I just heard that new visitor calling my name…”CHOMP!”

For more on VLB, check these websites:  http://ohioline.osu.edu/sc195/013.html, http://www.hort.cornell.edu/vlb/html   

 Posted by Mark Bir

I promised last time to highlight this book by Joe Lamp’l, our keynote for our upcoming Sustainability Symposium, and I really enjoyed this read. Its best quality: he boils some complex scientific topics down to easy-to-understand levels.  I found so much in here to share that I’m splitting this entry into 2 parts, so please enjoy.

 Part I:

In the chapter on Reducing Garden Chemicals is a very useful section on “…the unintended effect of de-icers in winter.” Useful, because well, we live in Cleveland and we use lots of de-icers. And we should if we don’t want people or pets slipping and falling. But there are many different products out there that can damage plants and soils in various ways. One product he does recommend as a salt-free de-icer is SafePaw™. Good to know!

I am also intrigued by chapter four: Landscaping to Control Runoff.  In the section, “plant trees and shrubs to control erosion” there is a nice little list of helpful trees and shrubs you can use for this purpose including spicebush, serviceberry and larch.  The thinking is that the tree canopy of these plants slows down the rain velocity, stores water on their leaves for a short period of time, and the roots help uptake water from the soil to prevent excessive runoff. In “plant a rain garden” there is once again a helpful list of plants to use in such a plot.  Joe-pye (one of my faves), swamp milkweed (another fave), and Jack-in-the-pulpit make this list. Stay tuned for chapter 7 highlights next time: Gardening to Protect the Ecosystem!

Posted by Renata Brown

I took teachers to Dike 14 last night as part of a teacher workshop. What the heck is Dike 14, you ask? It’s a secret little patch of 88 acres at the north end of Martin Luther King, Jr., Blvd, near Gordon State Park, located right on our Lake Erie. I took the teachers there to introduce them to this area, to look for plant and animal interactions, and discuss invasive species.

There’s been lots of press this year about the Port relocation and how it would impact this area. Some people are concerned about the move disrupting wildlife that have taken up residence on the Dike as well as the animals that use it as a migration stopover. Coyote, deer, mink, snakes, over 280 different species of birds, and many other creatures have been found here, so a thorough impact analysis needs to happen before final decisions are made. What do you think?

Dike 14 is a nature preserve not open to the public except for opportunities like the teachers had last night and the twice yearly open houses. The next open house is Saturday, September 26 from 7:30 – 2. The Garden will be helping out during the event and hopefully it will be as gorgeous of a day as it is today. Maybe we’ll see you there?

   Working for Peanuts
When you work in the Eleanor Armstrong Smith Glasshouse’s Costa Rica biome (as I do), a place populated by so many different animals and creatures, well, you inevitably become friends with a few of them.  You become atuned to the animals’ moods — or you’re gratified that they at least acknowledge your existence.  From the aloofness of our three radiated tortoises to the predatory, beady-eyed glare of our chameleons, subtle relationships are being formed and renewed every day.  Now some of these denizens of our Glasshouse become almost like pets; we interact.  Like most pets, the best way to get to know them is during feeding time.  Most animals (birds especially) reliably show up at the food cart in the morning.  It’s as if they’re telling me to hurry up.  If I so much as turn my back, a quick and sneaky finch will raid the food cart. 

The Ruddy Quail-dove (Geotrygon montana) is a ground bird. It walks up to the food cart and waits to be fed.  Over the last six years, we have gotten to know each other very well. I’m exactly not sure who has who trained. He’s spoiled by the shelled half peanuts or pine nuts that I dig out of the seed mix for him. He’s become quite a pudgy, happy bird.  Almost every time I bring out the cart, there he is.  When he’s not there, I’m now programmed to look for him. I’m used to his irritated wing-flapping when I try to leave him to attend to the other animals. "Little ingrate," I mutter to myself.

I suspect he has my number — he has me trained –  and he has me working for peanuts. 

What is the best way to rid your plants of aphids? Personally, I favor the quick, easy and instantaneous method of simply squishing the bugs. Don’t want to get gooey aphid guts on your hands? Ok, try insecticidal soaps, or neem oil. Neem oil is fantastic- a natural insecticide derived from the neem tree. It has a unique odor to it, but I wouldn’t call it off-putting, just distinctive. Do be careful if you use soaps- many plants don’t like soaps and will burn easily in the sun. Always spray a small test area first and never spray in the middle of a sunny day. Since soaps aren’t residual, you’ll need to spray as often as you see the bugs. Aphids have a nasty habit of getting out of control quickly. When their populations get really big, beneficial insects fly in to the rescue. The question is – can you wait that long to let the aphids get to large numbers before the ladybugs and lacewings come in? Possibly- remember, soap and neem can still harm beneficial bugs, too, so if you go that route know that your diminishing your chances of having predators knock down your aphids. If you choose to leave your aphids to the voracious whims of predators and parisitoids (mainly tiny wasps), you’ll be treated to the daily carnage that ensues when bugs are left to their own devices. Look for ladybugs (both adults and larvae) as well as lacewing larvae chowing down on aphids. Also, look for aphid mummies- the light bown, swollen, dead aphids that will eventually have a small exit hole in their backside. This small hole shows us that more tiny wasps have emerged and are on the prowl for more aphids. It’s a bug-eat-bug world!

An Aphid Mummy!

Caterpillars are eating machines. If they could eat any plant they wanted, our Costa Rica biome would probably be reduced to twigs. Luckily, most butterflies are very host specific, and the caterpillars will only eat the leaves of a few select species of plants, often from just a single genus. We generally avoid planting any of the host plants of the butterflies that we keep. Occasionally I will discover that some species of butterfly has found a newly added plant as an acceptable host plant.

     Passion vine is the host plant of several species of longwing butterflies in our exhibit. For the past few weeks, there have been several passion vines placed on the learning cart in Costa Rica, so visitors are able to see the butterflies laying eggs. The passion vines attract dozens of butterflies and allow the visitors to really see them up close.

     You can also see how much damage the caterpillars do as they munch away all the leaves.  I had to start rotating passion vines onto the cart after the caterpillars completely defoliated the first couple of plants put out. If we were to breed our own butterflies, it would take a whole lot of greenhouse space simply devoted to growing host plants and would be much more costly. As it is, our butterfly pupas come from breeders in tropical countries. They are able to grow host plants much quicker and without the use of greenhouses.  

     The butterflies were so excited to start laying eggs on a fresh passion vine that I had put out, that one of them made a mistake and laid an egg right on my shirt.

- Nate Tschaenn

Sticking with Geckos

 
We have just purchased a pair of Mossy Tailed Leaf Geckos (Uroplatus sikorae) for our expanding collection of reptiles.  At Cleveland Botanical Garden we keep a number of animals and insects behind the scenes to rotate with animals already on display.  When we find something of interest that benefits our biomes, like the geckos, we try to acquire them.  Matt Edwards, our Animal Care Specialist, found a pair and they arrived this week. You can look for them to be on periodic display after they have adjusted to their new surroundings.  Residents of the rainforest in Madagascar, these nocturnal geckos like high humidity and full spectrum light.  These carnivorous tree dwellers will be dining on a main course of crickets and super worms, sometimes with a calcium dusting.  Yum!

Be sure to look for their adapted feet that can cling to almost any surface. They can do this because of millions of tiny hairs called setae that branch into thousands of nanoscale tips called spatulae. These spatulae are only 200 billionths of a meter wide.  The combined adhesive ability of four gecko feet is about 90 pounds. Scientists continue to create new ways to apply the design of gecko feet using what is known as geckomimetic adhesives. The benefits are far reaching since gecko feet work under water and on most surfaces. This technology could replace glue or even screws at some point in the future. So forget that insurance gecko in the commercial and “stick” with the power of science.

We have some new denizens in the Costa Rica glasshouse — the Amazon Milky Tree Frogs! While they are still young frogs, they look surprisingly like bird droppings sitting on a leaf. I’m sure that’s because they want predators to leave them alone. After all, would you want to eat a bird dropping? They’ll get up to almost four inches long when they become adults. Right now we have ten frogs in our glass enclosure and they look just fantastic! We know that if they feel threatened, in the wild,  they exude a milky liquid from their pores which can be poisonous. However, this is not true with with captive reared frogs, such as ours. Ours are not poisonous because they don’t eat the same diet in captivity as these frogs do in nature. At the Garden, we feed them crickets and mealworms. In the Amazon, they feed mostly on ants, which likely makes these frogs toxic!

Come see our new frogs soon!